Just wondering where people get really high quality album art? I am trying to get all the covers 500x500 or higher.
Thanks
Believe it or not, Wal-Mart.com has some of the best. Not over 500x500 though.
Otherwise, just use Google image search and check for use Images Showing = extra large. Works sometimes
Cool,
I will check out WallyWorld :)
I was using a program called Album Art Downloader, it allowed me to pick which album art I wanted. Nowadays I'm lazy and I use whatever Tag&Rename picks for me.
Buy.com also has all 500x500 images, very good quality. I use both Walmart and Buy.com
Don't forget in freebox you don't want the images to be much larger than 320 x 320 otherwise you might find it sluggish paging through albums.
Amen. I spent a while reducing mine because they where to big. I did find a program that was basically command line that I drag and drop all my images on and it reduces the size down to 320x320. If anybody wants it remind me via PM.
If you are after high quality covers have a look at http://www.allcdcovers.com/index.php - usually 1mb plus per image file.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/ImageResizerPowertoySetup.exe
Microsoft tool, right click re size
you can highlight as many as you want also
on the point of 320x320, why so small? i use 500x500, your saying im speed is affected by this?
if you have a fast PC probably not but if its sorta old yes.
is there a tool which would look up album covers automatically? maybe you point it to your albums (folders) and enter websites for it to lookup? (allcd, amazon, walmart etc)
Quote from: Novalak on June 24, 2008, 04:19:39 AM
on the point of 320x320, why so small? i use 500x500, your saying im speed is affected by this?
The speed degredation is due to the size of the image. Freebox has to load up and re-size 12 images so the smaller the filesize the better as this is 12 disc reads. I have found 320 x 320 to be a good comprimise of quality and mainting speed.
andowhy,
Allcdcovers has some really nice scans, thanks. I noticed that some of them are not 500x500, or 1000x1000, but rather 1200x1030, some odd sizes. I wonder why that is?
I am worried now that Freebox will be a little slow. I will just have to make a test run of a few albums and see how it loads.
eist1, buy.com has nice scans too.
Thanks
Test it with large album covers and smaller covers. You will see it's quicker with smaller covers. It is not the fault of freebox just the fact it takes longer to load 12 big images as opposed to 12 smaller ones.
I have been coding a way around this, here it is in a nutshell
1) grab the highest quality art you can, drop it in your album folders.
2) use config 6 to build the database, put a check in "chache album art".
3) during the build, the config will put a thumbnail size image in a cache folder inside the freebox directory.
4) freebox can then pull the thumbnails from the cache folder for album pages, etc. and full sized image from the album folder for the track selection screen, now playing screen, etc.
This change is Dependant on the new database back end being integrated into freebox though.
Frosty
Frost,
That sounds cool. What size image does Freebox use now when displaying albums? Will the Cache size be the same as the freebox size? I like that, since I have found some covers that are pretty big ;D
It's not as complicated as it sounds. THe cache is basically a folder with thumbnails for each album that has a cover. The image sizes run between 5 and 20 K and are sized at 150 x 150 with 90% compression. I may add the ability to change these two parameters in the config for those with speedier systems.
Frosty
Quote from: frosty on June 30, 2008, 02:34:57 AM
It's not as complicated as it sounds. THe cache is basically a folder with thumbnails for each album that has a cover. The image sizes run between 5 and 20 K and are sized at 150 x 150 with 90% compression. I may add the ability to change these two parameters in the config for those with speedier systems.
Frosty
I have been playing around with this a little myself. I did some calculations with the now standard BnB screen size of 1024x768. At this resolution the cover art on the main page is currently displayed at approximately 170x130 give or take a couple pixels useing a 4x3 (12 album cover) setup.
I was originally thinking of creating a coverthumb.jpg in all the album folders at 170x170 to be displayed on the main page (any higher resolution useing the current BnB skin would be wasted). Then useing cover.jpg (at the highest resolution you could find the cover at) to use for the track selection screen, now playing screen, etc.
Barcrest would have to put an option in to look for the two seperate .jpg's, but it should definitely be doable.
Frosty's idea may be the better way to go though for speed, cacheing should be faster. Although if you have thousands of albums the cache will start to get pretty large. If this is the way it goes I would suggest a 170x170 standard for it (if the size option isn't implemented right away).
The 170x170 thumbs should be about half the size or less of what people are currently useing for cover art on the main screen, this should definitely show some speed improvement, even without the cacheing.
BZPilot has a point. Would involve a small change to the code but using 2 seperate images, (Hi-res for now playing and track listing) low res for browsing.. at 170x170 there would be a decent speed increase.
When I use the term caching, I'm saying that all the thumbnails are stored in a cache folder, and the full sized image is stored in the album folder. The thumbnails are not stored in memory at startup, but read from disk as needed. The reasons for this are as follows.
1) I got tired of having high res images and having to down-sample them to make page flips faster. This was both time intensive and created artwork that was blurry on the track selection/now playing screens. The fix was to incorporate the resizing of the artwork into the config so that the user wouldn't need to do it manually, and to change the jukebox to read the thumbnail or full size image as bzpilot describes.
2) as originally coded, I was storing the thumbnails in the album folders. Spudgunman pointed out that he has spent hundreds of hours getting his music folders built and doesn't like the idea of any media program changing things. He went so far as to set his media folder read only to prevent data from changing or being lost. This seemed perfectly logical to me which is why the thumbnails are now stored in the freebox\cache folder. If you don't want the cache, run the build and un-check the "build artwork cache" option. If the cache is already built and you don't want it, just delete the cache folder. Either way it doesn't affect the way the jukebox handles the artwork.
So in short, the new artwork model as coded follows bzpilots exact description with the exception of the thumbnails being stored in the cache folder (where its easier to manage) instead of the album folders.
Hope this clears things up
Frosty
I think Frostys idea of having the program create a cache folder in the Freebox directory would be the way to go. Trying to go through hundred's if not thousands of folders and create a smaller .jpgs would be a pain, plus it would start to clutter the media directory.
Quote from: James77 on June 30, 2008, 11:20:40 PM
I think Frostys idea of having the program create a cache folder in the Freebox directory would be the way to go. Trying to go through hundred's if not thousands of folders and create a smaller .jpgs would be a pain, plus it would start to clutter the media directory.
This isn't an issue if you have your artwork all named the same. I could just a search for cover.jpg on my media drive then drag the results to the bulk re-sizer to make them 170 x 170 and save the new image as coversmall.jpg
It would not be too hard to do, frosty's method is basically the same thing really however doing it via the config will probably mean it will take longer to build the library. Then depending how these are stored it may have to do it evertime if you kill your database i am not sure...
Either way involves changing the current code. I am currently working on 4.0.8 and the focus of that is to increase speed. Maybe i will try this out at some point i don't know.
Current BnB skin:
Track Listing Album Art: 440x340
Now Playing Album Art: 410x320
So currently anything over about 450x450 even on the high resolution side would be wasted.
Like I mentioned up above some where I use a command line looking app and it will bulk resize all images. Basically you just drag your MP3 folder on it and it scans every folder looking for images. Anything that is an image over the preset size it resizes it automaticallly. Super fast as well.
Here it is.... Way easier than doing one file at a time or using XP's image resize addon.
http://www.rw-designer.com/picture-resize
Quote from: James77 on June 30, 2008, 11:20:40 PM
I think Frostys idea of having the program create a cache folder in the Freebox directory would be the way to go. Trying to go through hundred's if not thousands of folders and create a smaller .jpgs would be a pain, plus it would start to clutter the media directory.
not so sure...i used the program kizer mentioned above a long while back and literally it went thru 4116 albums covers in i believe under a minute. its really easy!! thats gong thru the entire folder i keep my music in with over 70,000files. it only looks for the jpegs and resizes and replaces them instantly. and just keep the program on your desktop so when just before you add new music, drag that folder over the icon and your done! all images are the same.
-ive seen no instances in my artwork where theres blurring or stretching unless the image was already smaller than 300x300. and i know i cant blame speed issues on my album art cuz i know there all the same suggested size. ;)
I have all my art work embeded within my .mp3s and still find it very easy to extract all images in the album art folders. Useing Media Monkey and a script within it that will extract (actually the option I use just extracts a copy of the album art image out and keeps the original embeded) the image out to any size I would like and save it as any name.
I just ran it once with over 1500 album covers for a 450x450 cover.jpg for each album and it took under a minute. Then ran it again for a 170x170 coversmall.jpg and again under a minute. Or I could have ran the program draginit mentions to just resize and rename the 450x450 images.
So there are definitely ways to do this that take no time at all and are user friendly.
I think if Barcrest can just add an option to look for the seperate images within Freebox people can either use it or not at there own discretion.
To see what kind of performance increase I would get with this, I deleted all my cover.jpg's I originally had been using which were at 300x300 and used 170x170 images and noticed a considerable speed difference when paging through and skipping around through the album art pages!!
I will add this as an option in the next release, it is something i like the sound of.
In MultiJuke I use a thumbnail folder (in MultiJuke folder) with a md5 hash for each coverart (includning path and such), that have been scaled down. That is done when building library.
MultiJuke use then thumbnails under tableview. when open a album, it then use high quality (I user around 800x800 pixels for most coverart).
That is what I do with coverart in my application. Freebox could do the same.... The only downside is the building of database take some longer time.
Maybe a cover.jpg for album view and a cover2.jpg for full size. Could you have it upscale cover.jpg for larger if said cover2.jpg doesn't exist?
I don't mind haveing 2 image sets, but I really like the idea of everything residing in the albums folder for ease of maintenance.
That just means I'd personally would have to rename all my cover.jpg's to cover2.jpg then resize them down to whatever is deemed the fastest and name those to cover.jpg. ;)
I hope I'm not sounding to confusing. ;)
anyone know how to use kizers tool to also rename the files? I wanted to create a cover_small for all my albums.
Welp I just renamed the .exe file to PhotoResize150.exe and it will convert the cover.jpg file to cover-150.jpg of course at 150x150.
There are a bunch of switches, but honestly my brain hurts trying to figure it all out.
http://www.rw-designer.com/photo-resizer-advanced
To use a bunch of the switches you have to create a short cut and then put all your switches in the path of the short cut. Then to use app just drag a folder full of images on to the shortcut.
Quote from: Barcrest on July 05, 2008, 08:23:04 PM
anyone know how to use kizers tool to also rename the files? I wanted to create a cover_small for all my albums.
This isn't Kizer's method but I have been useing a program for years and I do believe it will be the best method to go about this......
The program is called
Faststone Photo Resizer: http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm (http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm)
The program is FREE for home users! The current version is 2.6.
Once in this program you'll need to set up some different settings:
1) Use the Batch Convert
2) The "Source" folder will be your main folder/directory that contains all your Music, Videos, and Karaoke
3) The "Output" folder needs to be set to the same folder/directory as the "Source"
4) Output format .jpg
5) Select "Use folder structure in output format." - this will make sure all resized pictures are placed in their original folders
6) Select "Use advanced options." - This is where you will select the Resize tab and set your dimensions (suggested size with current stock skin: 170x170 for small size and 450x450 for large)
7) Select "Rename" - Here you have plenty of options on what to rename the file, select the "?" to show you your options; examples are: "*small" will give you "coversmall.jpg", "*2" will give you "cover2.jpg", along with tons of other options
8) Select "Ask before overwrite." - this is optional. One benefit is if you have messed up the settings and attempt to overwrite your original .jpg file (this can happen if you don't select the "rename" option)- you can catch it here. The only issue with this setting is, that if you have already run this program and are attempting to run it again, you will need to confirm each overwrite of your coversmall.jpg (or whatever filename you choose for your second .jpg).
It may sound a little intimidating at first but really only takes a minute to setup and once setup you can save the settings and each time you run the program those settings will automatically be reloaded. Really the best way to go about useing this program is to use it once on your full collection, and then only use it on the folders of your new additions to keep from getting issues with producing extra files like: coversmallsmall.jpg (which would be one of the files created in a folder already containing cover.jpg and coversmall.jpg useing the option above). You'll see what I mean when you play around with it.
It's a pretty impressive little program with a million options, most of which aren't needed in this situation but is a good piece of software to have around.
Not sure how Barry is going to set the options for this within Freebox. He may have an option to search for a specific named second .jpg like "coversmall.jpg"), or he may leave the name up to the user by useing an input box for a name to look for? Just be ready to change your settings in the "Rename" section to what is needed by Freebox when this option is finally released.
Yeah I forgot about Faststone. I've used it a few times for other things, but it will do what your looking for as well. I've always used the app I showed earlier because its brainless once you set it up. Just drag and drop and its done. However its limited to the little features of what FastStone offers.
However if we are able to name the second file in the config I'll stick with what I have been using just because I'm lazy. ;)
I tried kizers method before i posted. If i search for cover.jpg on my folder then drag those results to the exe i get a permissions error. I am going to try the other method now.
Ok i tried that method BZpiolot posted. The trouble is i have other artwork in thos folders and i needed to specify cover.jpg as the input filename so although i ran that i can't be sure my coversmall1.jpg will be the resized cover.jpg it might be a back image or something.
Anyway i have added a second text box so you can specify a filename for the smaller image to use when browsing covers. I will also use this smaller image on other screens like search results and decades etc. I just need to do some tweaking to it.
The easiest method would be using frosty's code but instead of building a cache folder it just made the smaller resized image into the music folder with a specified name.
Thats what I would do Barcrest.
For instance I'm going to be lazy and probably not use this new feature for a while because well I have to find new Artwork. So IMHO I would have two boxes.
Large Artwork cover.jpg > changeable to say largecover.jpg
Small Artwork cover.jpg
As I get time I could start collecting new artwork for the large covers or in this case small covers. Ah heck mine is the default so Im guessing I would need to shrink the existing 300x300 and get larger say 500x500 for the large.
My only question I guess is. Is there a way to set a backup just incase larger artwork isn't found? Or is it best just to create a second file and just rename it to the users file name he selects as a filler file until he throws in a higher quality image so the app finds it and uses it.
You can leave both boxes as cover.jpg and it will work as it did before the change. However if you specify a smaller cover, say coversmall1.jpg as i did then if it doesn't find that cover it will not show the cover.jpg. I had to do it this way otherwise all the extra file checking would have cause a slowdown and that's what we are trying to avoid. Check out the latest beta the code is in there. I must say the 170x170 covers make the paging albums a lot quicker on my machine.
I don't plan on using this either unless it is built into the config and does it automatically.
Just a thought for those of you that have to get larger artwork or those who are still getting their original artwork.....
When I originally got my artwork I looked for the largest I could find (usually 500x500) and embedded it within the .mp3. Now anytime I want to extract and resize I can just use MediaMonkey (the same program I used to embed it) to extract a copy and resize it to whatever I need. Within MediaMonkey are the options for resizing and renameing the image while extracting a copy of it.
This would also help you Barry, that is if you only embed the cover image (because you currently can't be selective on what embeded image to extract at this time).
For instance you could extract once at 450x450 for cover.jpg and extract again at 170x170 for coversmall.jpg. You can easily batch extract your whole collection at once very quickly too.
Also nice to have the embeded art if you ever use your music in portable audio formats that support it eg. itunes, ipods, iphone etc.
Barcrest sounds like I would just have to make a copy of every image but rename them to something else so there wouldn't be any need for error checking. Sounds like a plan.
I do feel there will be others like Squirl that do not want the extra work, but I think in the end if its not the Config its the user. Somebody is doing a bunch of work. Either somebody has to figure it out and code it or run some freeware and make it work.
Any recommended sizes Barcrest for large cover and small cover?
I don't embed because 16000+ tracks would make my collection larger than not having them all embeded.
Barcrest having way more than that would make the collection even larger.
Gave it a try using that FastStone app. Just make sure you test it before you change all of your files. Nothing worse than running it and having it resize and rename a bunch of files and figure out that you messed up. ;)
I changed my images from 300x300 to 150x150 and set the names to
cover.jpg - large
cover-150.jpg small
I was tinkering with "spin on this" since I only have 10 albums loaded on my laptop. Normally using cover.jpg it was taking just shy of 3 seconds to from clicking the button to just over 2 seconds using cover-150.jpg as my small cover.
Great thing if you don't use it just leave both as cover.jpg, but if you want to enable it change the larger or smaller to whatever you want.
What I did wasn't scientific or anything, but .5 seconds per page load is still .5 seconds faster. ;)
Quote from: Barcrest on July 05, 2008, 08:23:04 PM
anyone know how to use kizers tool to also rename the files? I wanted to create a cover_small for all my albums.
I found a way to use that progeam that kizer sent
http://www.rw-designer.com/picture-resize
to batch create the "cover_small.jpg" images in your music directory in the correct subfolders. First thing I did was download it into a folder on C: called C:\PHOTO. I named it photoresize.exe (no switches, no sizes saved in the filename). Now, to use this .exe file, we will use the command line method (not the drag-n-drop)
I launched a DOS window, navigated to C:\PHOTO where photoresize.exe is located, and ran this command line:
photoresize -500x500 -i -r -n -q100 d:\musicThis resized everything in my music folder (which is d:\music) AND all subfolders. The switches:
-500x500 resized them all to 500x500 pixels
-i resized them In-place (no renaming, just overwrite the file)
-r is recursive, meaning to scan all subfolders as well
-n is to sharpen the image. I tried it once without, and once with, and Iike the sharpened image a little better. YMMV
-q100 is the quality of the image, 0 to 100. I chose highest quality, which made the image a little bigger (each about 130-150kb when done)
Once I have all my "cover.jpg" images the same size and quality, it was time to use those images to make the 170x170 "cover_small.jpg" images, stored in the same folder. To do this, I used the command:
photoresize -170x170 -r -n -q100 "-c<ROOT>\<PATH>\cover_small.jpg" d:\musicBE SURE TO TAKE OUT THE -i SWITCH from the first command line, or you will be resizing them and renaming them in-place (not good!). We want to make a 170x170 COPY
Also, just type it in JUST LIKE THAT, the only thing you need to change is the very end in red. Point it at YOUR music directory. Other than that, leave the part of "-c<ROOT>\<PATH>\cover_small.jpg" alone.......and include the quotation marks. Just like I have it there.
And that was that. Easy as pie.
Lemme know if it works for you guys:
FJ
Thanks for the walktrhough that was great... Is there a way to only re-size and rename the cover.jpg file. The problem i am having is a lot of my folders contain other cover art. Usual the back covers and other images like really hi-res version of the covers and inlays etc. There must be a way in the command line to tell it only to do cover.jpg as the source image i just couldn't figure it out.